Transcript:

During our interview with Loren Cawaling, he showed us this photograph of his mother, Aladina Cawaling, standing in a field of flowers. The photograph elicited memories of Loren’s mother, including her fondness for gardening and her experiences working in the canneries. Many manang worked in the food processing industry including canneries and frozen food packaging factories, and this interview captures their labor. Watsonville, dubbed the “Frozen Food Capital of the World” during the 1980s, was the hub for food processing in part because of manang labor. In this interview, Loren recalls the hardships his mother endured while working at Green Giant, one of the major canneries in the area. 

I mean, you know, I love this picture. […] My mom had a green thumb. […] I mean, everybody used to tell us man, you know, your mom’s yard this and that. She had beautiful flowers in the front yard. I mean, it was always colorful all the time. […] You know, she did like everybody else. Everybody worked on the canneries back in the old days. […] That original Green Giant cannery sat at the corner of Walker Street and Beach Street, and I want to say back in the 60s when my mom was working, it employed a lot of people. I mean, there was no OSHA regulations back then and stuff. My mom used to tell me stories of accidents there, where, let’s say, no one was wearing a hairnet. I remember a story that she said that somebody got their hair caught in a piece of machinery. I mean, nobody got killed or anything, but but you know, she was telling me that somebody got hurt. My Manang Rosie used to work there. I think my Aunty Lita used to work there. Just because that was like one of the first processing plants in the area, and everybody wanted to get a job there. […] You know, I remember her putting a hairnet on, and, you know, my dad would drop her off in front of the factory, you know, before he had to go to work in the fields or whatever. And then yeah, and then come back and pick her up later on.